Please Don’t Perform DIY Fecal Transplants At Home

Viewing videos of folks putting human urine in a blender to create a milkshake they then use as an enema on YouTube is a thing. Because of this developing tendency, physicians are now having to warn that the practice of DIY fecal transplants could be placing the recipients at risk of dispersing a plethora of medical ailments, from HIV to obesity.

Transferring feces from a healthy individual to another is currently fairly common practice when treating several conditions, such as the “superbug” Clostridium difficile. The bacterial infection can lead to considerable problems and sometimes when antibiotics don’t receive the germs under control, fecal transplants can be utilized in a clinical setting.

The aim is to present the microbiome — or neighborhood of germs — from a individual. But as an increasing amount of research has been uncovering just how far the influence of the bacteria in our intestine extends, with studies implicating our microbiome in a vast range of ailments such as Parkinson’s, stress, obesity, and even autism, some people opt to take things into their own hands.

It has given rise to a complete library of videos on YouTube informing people how to perform their own fecal transplant. But this do-it-yourself approach is not recommended, based on experts.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference this week, the University of California San Diago’s Rob Knight reported that doing such a process at home threats exposing the receiver into a wide range of germs that could do far more harm than good.

Once completed in a hospital setting, as an instance, the donated feces is broadly screened for germs which have previously been linked to conditions such as Parkinson & rsquo; s MS, as well as for other infectious diseases such as hepatitis and HIV. But there are concerns that the microbiome was linked to different ailments.

It has actually been observed before. A few years back, a patient was being treated for an infection of C. difficile, and obtained a feces transplant from her healthy, but obese, daughter. Surprisinglyafter the transplant, the mom then became obese.

As more research is completed, and conditions linked to the microbiome, of dispersing these the threat is increasing. So as to see how large the risk actually is the investigators are currently looking to start collecting more data on recipients and donors of transplants.